A Panda-Bear Abroad

This weekend

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:44:32 +0200

will mostly (entirely) be spent learning some World War 2 shit. Currently revising the Nuremberg Trials and all of that stuff, but can’t help feeling that if I’d wanted to do a history degree then that’s what I would have done. And there’s a good reason why I didn’t.

All I want to do is be able to speak a bit of foreign, whyyyy must I have to deal with all of this crap too?

True story…

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:39:00 +0200

True story…

Ahhhhh a week’s time and I’ll be in my last exam which is just translation so it’s...

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:48:25 +0200

Ahhhhh a week’s time and I’ll be in my last exam which is just translation so it’s just a bit of fun really ;)

And then my bff Lucy’s coming up for a kerrrazy B’ham weekender and it’s gona be ace.

I can’t WAIT to spend all bleedin’ summer with my...

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:13:07 +0200

I can’t WAIT to spend all bleedin’ summer with my best gal.

Anyway so a rully cool thing happened yesterday - I got accepted for the British Council teaching...

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:29:25 +0200

Anyway so a rully cool thing happened yesterday - I got accepted for the British Council teaching job in Spain!! Waaaaaaa. No word yet as to whereabouts I’ll be but this is r8 exciting, because I was starting to think I’d be getting a taste of life as a long-term unemployed. Ahhh SO exciting.

In other news, we went out on Saturday to celebrate Sophie and Rachel finishing their exams and that was a TOP night and I wasn’t even too hungover on Sunday, although I had three series of Gavin and Stacey to ease my pain. They’ve left now and fly to Malta tomorrow which will be well exciting and I’m dead jealous because I’m stuck here revising all about Auschwitz and the Holocaust :(

So as a pre-empting celebration (I could obviously feel it in my waters) me and Beth went on a date night to Wagamama’s and then slurped cocktails by the canal in Brindley Place.

And I just made the omelette of champions, so my life’s r8 gr8 right now :)

THIS is going to be my post-exam treat. See if I’ve...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:20:44 +0200

THIS is going to be my post-exam treat. See if I’ve managed to learn any Spanolo in my time here.

Video

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:04:55 +0200

Got my final year Spanish oral exam tomorrow. Is it a bad thing that I’m not bothered about it...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:14:19 +0200

Got my final year Spanish oral exam tomorrow.

Is it a bad thing that I’m not bothered about it in the slightest?

Today, I finished my second essay in a week. The sad thing about this otherwise triumphant...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:22:07 +0200

Today, I finished my second essay in a week. The sad thing about this otherwise triumphant achievement is that I no longer feel the buzz of finishing an essay. Instead, it’s straight on to the next one, possibly after a celebratory brew.

Take me back to first year where essays were only a mere 1500 words.

If my laptop wasn’t such a pile o’ shit, it would be a lot more conducive to writing...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:21:05 +0200

If my laptop wasn’t such a pile o’ shit, it would be a lot more conducive to writing essays; I would be able to actually get stuff done instead of waiting for the things that are ‘not responding’ to respond.

On the other hand, yesterday I wrote the literature review for my TEFL project and it is bangin’. Ask me anything about why people are scared to speak foreign, cause I can tell you.

Bleurgh.

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:51:00 +0200

I think it has just dawned on me how much I’ve got to do and how little time I’ve got to do it all in. I’ve got about a week and a half to bosh out three insanely long essays, not to mention thinking about revising for my Spanish oral on the first day back. Don’t even get me started on how much they’re worth - this oral is just worth a cheeky 50% of my Spanish language grade :/ So obviously I am tackling it all head on (if eating omelettes and catching up on New Girl counts as tackling it head on.)

If someone should find my misplaced motivation, please do let me know - I’d love to have it back.

Also, ol’ life just got well confusing recently, but I’ve got more important stuff (such as my beloved degree) I should be dealing with rather than dedicating valuable brainspace and thinking time to other silly old things.

christineabroad: Alcázar of Sevilla.

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:42:18 +0200

christineabroad:

Alcázar of Sevilla.

Photo

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:26:00 +0200

johnnyonespur: Parc Guell, Barcelona

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:19:05 +0200

johnnyonespur:

Parc Guell, Barcelona

I don’t know how much I took being in Tübingen for granted...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:03:17 +0200

I don’t know how much I took being in Tübingen for granted at the time, but it really was a charming little town :)

carlesprats: Barcelona 7.

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:01:44 +0200

carlesprats:

Barcelona 7.

Which means more of this hilarity is going to happen.

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:05:00 +0200

Which means more of this hilarity is going to happen.

Another good thing

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:09:00 +0200

Is that I’ve got a Glastonbury ticket this year by process of some kind of miracle.

On the day they came out in October, I went to Harry Potter World instead and foolishly left Big Ange in charge. No wonder we didn’t get any (joking I am, she came so close.)

But good luck prevailed and I got my paws on four FREE ones in exchange for a bit of security guarding one night, which is always pretty funny as you get to hear all the behind-the scenes gossip.

So how cool is that - I got on Hagrid’s motorbike and walked under a giant tarantula down Harry Potter World AND I’m going to Glasto for free. Talk about having one’s butterbeer and drinking it.

This is what happens at Heeley Manor following some innocent...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:00:59 +0200

This is what happens at Heeley Manor following some innocent wines and cocktails…

Hi all. Well April is upon us and, since I am procrastinating like a boss (it’s ok, I only...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:48:00 +0200

Hi all.

Well April is upon us and, since I am procrastinating like a boss (it’s ok, I only have 12,000 sickening words of essay still to write) I thought I’d document all the antics that this term has brought.

The brief response to this is not a lot; this term has been full of having to do real-life actual work, accompanied by guilt by the bucket-load when I’ve actually gone out and had fun. Sadly the going-out-and-having-fun is in itself usually accompanied by a hangover that renders me out of action the following day, hence more guilt.

Two rully rully funny things DID happen though, and I shall share them with you now.

The first of these happened after an innocent-enough evening spent at a pub in Moseley. We had some wine, had some cocktails (some of which were more deadly than others), we had a bit more wine, and when the pub closed we decided to carry on the mayhem back at Heeley Manor. What ensued was an 80s and 90s party mix, ranging from Saturday Night and the Ketchup Song (we did indeed do the dances in our living room) to Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, and Toto. A little bit further down the line we decided to give pride of place to our little living room palm tree and stick it on the telly, before deciding to nourish ourselves on endless 3am pancakes. Turns out a mini pan, excess alcohol and someone else’s glasses are detrimental to the pancake-tossing process because I ended up tossing mine over the floor. 4.30am and Old Beth rocks up from her own night out and is more than bemused to find the party in full swing, we’re drinking a lethal squash/vodka/tequila mix out of Pyrex dishes and she’s left wondering what on earth she’s missed ;) After Sophie and Beth called it a night (having made arrangements to go to the Selly Sausage at, precisely, 11am the next day), Rachel and I were the last ones standing, whacking on Mamma Mia and Vicky Cristina Barcelona and eventually flopping into bed, fully clothed, Rachel cuddling up with her stethoscope, apparently, at almost seven in the morning. No-one saw that one coming, I don’t think.

The second really funny thing also started out innocently enough, after a pub quiz. I had originally refused to go, because I knew it would end in chaos, but I’m a sucker for pub quizzes, and am particularly fond of the pub where it was. Four and a bit bottles of wine later, we were royally smashed and, unsurprisingly, came second to last having filled our quiz sheet up with Welsh and Gavin and Stacey catchphrases. Cue some daft bugger suggesting we go to Subway City, where it turns out Beth and her pal Craig didn’t get in. Unbeknownst to us, Rachel and I went from room to room, shouting “Beth! Beth”, falling down some stairs, whacking out the moves to Saturday Night on a balcony somewhere, befriending some Welsh people in the toilets, before getting out of there after about an hour and…six drinks later apparently.

We then trekked across the entire city in search of some chicken, stumbling across some poor lad all on his own in some derelict part of Birmingham. Being nice, we sat down for a chat - turns out he’d lost his friend, so we bundled him into a passing police car. That was our good samaritan move for the night. We got to Big Bite where Rachel ordered a veritable chicken feast which she argued only cost £5.99. It wasn’t, I could clearly see it cost £8.99 and included the word “feast.” I figured she was really hungry for chicken. I just bowled on in there and asked to “Five pounds’ worth of chicken” as if it was an actual thing you could order, and the fella behind the counter was understandably baffled; I had to get Rachel to come and back me up and tell him I just wanted “five pounds’ worth of chicken.” Sitting at our table, I was pretty confused why Rach had two cans of drink, she told me it just came with two. The next day, whilst nursing our incredible sore heads, she put two and two together and realised she’d eaten a meal for two - having found extra chips and chicken at the bottom of the bag.

So that’s it. Life got increddddddibly boring after this. I swapped pubs for the library and got fed up with my degree. It’s been an ace four years, but I’m so over this having-to-do-work lark. All I wanted to do was be able to understand Penny Cruz chatting in her native Spanolo, rather than writing some bollocks about a Spanish film adaptation. I’ve got a little over a month to do, and then it’s overrrrrrr.